Given all the help I’ve received to get me to yesterday’s surgery and my recovery ahead, I think today’s earworm has to be “Lean on Me”.
Here are Bill Withers, Stevie Wonder and John Legend singing in
at 2015’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony for Withers.
Crank up the volume.
Okay, today the great adventure begins. At 1130 EST I’m scheduled for total knee replacement on the right knee. I hope to be back at home late afternoon, early evening.
Thanks to everyone who’s helping me with this—offers of rides
to/from hospital, staying with me for the first days, grocery shopping/errand
running. And thanks for the lending of the walker and cane.
I have a bowlful of prescriptions and some major gripes with CVS
and CVS/Caremark, who suck eggs. (Here’s something you don’t want to hear from
your pharmacist WRT prescription labeling: “It’s a mistake.”) My portion of the surgeon and hospital bills are paid (are they afraid I won't survive and therefore want to collect days/weeks before?) I have post-op exercise instructions from
my physical therapist (who is, in fact, in-network, even though the jackass at
Anthem told them they weren’t), and an in-person appointment for Monday.
I had an afternoon yoga lesson yesterday, to mark the transition
from Everything Before to Everything Next.
There’s a cot in my livingroom, courtesy of the friend I had
dinner with on Tuesday.
Friend: Do you want to borrow a cot to set up on the ground
floor?
Me: No, they want me doing stairs.
Friend:
Me: Wut?
Friend: Not while taking those drugs.
Me: Oh. Okay, thanks for lending me the cot.
My PT also reminded me to bring my toothbrush and toothpaste to
the powder room on the ground floor. Good call—I wouldn’t have thought of it.
I’ve got a supply of Lean Cuisines and a stack of Agatha
Christies (which are entertaining without requiring a lot of intellectual engagement), so I think I’m good to go.
See you on the other side.
On behalf of a faltering humanity, let me just ask the question: who the ever-loving hell ever thought it was a good idea for someone facing surgery to have to register with the hospital via mobile phone?
Reston Hospital Center did that several weeks ago. I told them
to quit sending me texts because I wasn’t going to do anything via mobile. And
yet, here we are:
Well, after going to the website (not via mobile), what do I find but this:
I swear, they can not knock me out soon enough.
I confess that my mind is focused on other things this week, so my posts will probably be somewhat lightweight.
I was gunging out some files and came across the pix I shot at
Charles de Gaulle airport when I landed in October, so here’s what struck me
about it.
First: the sunrise:
Then this ceiling light in one of the corridors between the gate
and passport control (which may have been in Belgium, considering the distance
I walked—plus taking a train):
But things on the floor also caught my attention:
And this:
Because in every airport in every country but the United States,
these luggage carts are free! What the hell is up with US airports
charging you $8 for them? It’s not like people are going to leave the airport
with them. Man, that burns my bacon.
Finally, the TGV station at the fringe of CDG. I love the
architecture.
You may be aware that tech companies have been shedding employees at a rate of knots recently. My employer is among them.
But last week I learned I’m not among the thousands who’ve been
let go, and I am sincerely grateful.
Oh, man—man, oh man, oh man. David Crosby, dead at 81. Stalwart of The Byrds, founding member of Crosby, Stills & Nash (and then Young). Tempestuous, passionate, recovering addict, creator of ethereal, impossible harmonies.
I can’t even.
So many songs, so many performances imprinted on my soul over the decades. But I
think I’ll give you their cover of “Woodstock”, written by Joni Mitchell,
because the 1969 concert was the second live appearance of CSN.
Damn.
Okay, I’m one week out from having my right knee carved up like a pumpkin and a foreign object permanently embedded in my body. It’s starting to get real.
I’ve got my ride to and from the hospital sorted, and can borrow
a walker and cane from friends. (Reston Hospital doesn’t lend patients these
things, claiming supply chain issues.) This weekend I’ll stock up on Lean
Cuisines or similar—thank God for the pandemic purchase of a 17 cu ft freezer.
I’ll also roll up all the area rugs to get them out of my path.
I’ve had all the scans, tests, labs and examinations. Today I
talk with a pre-registration (?) nurse at the hospital. S/he’ll stick a swab up
my nose and ask a bunch of questions that I feel like I must have already
answered in any one of the 16,732 online forms I’ve completed. I’ll also be
given carbohydrate drink(s) and instructions on when to drink them on S-Day.
My health insurance has already balk at paying for something (delta between the first name on the insurance card and the name on the radiology department’s account). And I just yesterday received word that my insurance views my PT provider as out of network "because not located in California". I spent ~45 minutes on the horn with my [company] healthcare concierge to determine that the provider is, in fact, in-network, and Max D. at Anthem was being a jackass when he told the provider that porky.
The hospital emailed me last
week to say that my portion of the facility charge is $2000, but if I paid
within 72 hours of the email, they’d discount it 20%. I did. (And then I got
another invitation to pay in advance. They need to work on their algorithm.) Surgeon
wants his co-pay two days before he pulls out his scalpel; I haven’t heard from
the anesthesiologist, but I imagine s/he’ll get in line before the day, too.
Just have to borrow some Agatha Christie detective novels to see
me through the first few days after the operation and I should be set.
A lot of tech companies provide some configuration of food/beverage for their employees. Bare minimum table stakes is free coffee/tea (which is why I was gobsmacked on my first day at the non-profit a few years ago to find out they didn’t even do that). The next tier up is sodas and snacks (some array of junk food, usually) and possibly an on-site cafeteria where the meals are subsidized.
Then there’s the free food, full stop.
Hot-shot startups tout “community lunches!” and “catered
dinners!”, which only means that they expect you to work through your lunch and
far into the night. The megaliths like Apple and Facebook (and, once, Twitter) have
multiple cafés and cafeterias serving varieties of cuisine from morning to
night—all at no cost to staff and guests. Because otherwise you’d waste time
getting in your car to go somewhere to eat and then come back.
That’s it, basically. They want to keep you on campus and
producing; it's worth it to them to feed you.
In the before times, my current employer had the requisite reefers
of soft drinks (both Coke and Pepsi products, plus juices, canned coffees and
milk), coffee machines (Nespresso as well as something that disgorges coffee
and latte-like beverages, only I’ve seen the innards of that mechanism, so I
don’t use it), and walls of snacks (from Pop Tarts—although there are no
toasters—to chips, cookies and energy bars).
Additionally, every Tuesday we had a hot lunch, catered from an
array of restaurants. My first ever Tuesday there was brioches with eggs and
bacon in them, as well as trays of bacon (and, of course, vegan and vegetarian alternatives).
That was, hands down, the best ever—even better than the Indian, Mexican,
barbecue and other ones.
(Additionally, there were almost always leftovers, so you could
have lunch again the next day.)
I never had to worry about making dinner on Tuesdays. It was
great.
Well, Covid put an end to that—primarily because everyone worked
remotely. A few months after they re-opened the office, they had Tuesday lunches
brought in, but it was all pre-portioned into sealed containers and, frankly,
not very appetizing. Yeah—a couple of times were good, but it was mostly
tasteless and not much of a variety. (The fruit cups were good.)
There were rumblings among the staff; that’s how bad they
are.
I brought the remains of one lunch home and set it outside for the birds, squirrels and occasional fox. The meat disappeared overnight, the rice stayed for a couple of days and the broccoli was there for weeks.
Well, then came the acquisition by Megalithic Software Company,
and they took over the food provision process. The array of canned coffees and
types of milk in the reefers metastasized, the two coffeelike extrusion
machines have been broken for weeks and the variety of snacks was decimated.
But because it’s this company’s policy to feed their employees on site (see
above about not wanting people to waste time away from the computer), they
promised us we’d be getting hot lunches delivered to us every day (we
have no cooking facilities in the office).
Well, that was the story, but then it was, oh—it’ll start later
in the week. Then, it’ll start next week. That was three weeks ago, and they
finally started it up yesterday.
With the same catering vendor, Tasteless R Us.
<Sigh>
I don’t know if this is permanent—how could it be when somewhere
out there there’s a vendor who stuffs little brioches with eggs and bacon?—or what.
I guess we’ll see.
On the plus side, they fill bowls with fruit. So far I’ve
brought home five apples and made tarts, and yesterday I took two oranges, since they cost $1.25 each at the grocery store. Girl's gotta make ends meet.
The third Monday in January is the day the United States honors the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr. It seems to me that the older I get, the more I appreciate him—his steadfastness, his faith, his courage, his humanity. He brought joy to everything he did, even in the face of everything frightened White supremacists threw at him.
I’ve been thinking of King and what he called the “normalcy” he
sought.
In his speech at the end of the Selma to Birmingham march in
March of 1965, here’s how he put it:
“The only
normalcy that we will settle for is the normalcy that recognizes the dignity
and worth of all of God’s children. The only normalcy that we will settle for
is the normalcy that allows judgment to run down like waters, and righteousness
like a mighty stream. The only normalcy that we will settle for is the normalcy
of brotherhood, the normalcy of true peace, the normalcy of justice.”
People of good will are still seeking that normalcy—and running
up against the same crowd who obstructed King more than 50 years ago. But they
are every bit as determined as King, and they bring the same courage, faith, humanity
and joy to the fight.
I was reminded of this by the speech House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries gave following the election of Kevin McCarthy to Speaker.
HOLY SHIT, my man Rep. Hakeem Jeffries actually schooled these fools alphabetically!👏👏👏 pic.twitter.com/PFQ18f7vWP
— BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ (@mmpadellan) January 7, 2023
